Rhetorical Analysis Of Brent Staples's 'Just Walk On By'

Just Walk On By Rhetorical Analysis
In his article “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space”, which first appeared in the women’s magazine Ms. Magazine and later Harpers, Brent Staples explores the discrimination he faced as a black man living in Chicago and New York. In writing this piece, Brent Staples hoped to use a combination of pathos and ethos to demonstrate to the women that read Ms. Harper’s that Staples is actually the victim when the women treat him the way they do and to get these women to view him, and other black men, differently and to make them realize that they are people too. Staples use of his ethos and pathos serve well to support his position and convince others to take a new perspective. Staples uses ethos in multiple ways …show more content…

Magazine, the magazine in which his piece “Just Walk on By” first appeared, through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos. He uses the combination of these three persuasive tools to juxtapose his feelings of discrimination and helplessness with the same feelings the reader would experience in the same situation, gently framing them as the perpetrator and himself the victim. From this common viewpoint, Staples is able to evoke emotions to strengthen the connection with his readers while employing logos to show that he understands why the reader acts the way they do. Throughout all of this he is also weaving in his feelings, enabling the reader to take his perspective as he explains to them the way their actions impact himself and his entire race and gender as people repeatedly discriminate against him. Though his goal of getting people to change their behavior is not explicitly stated, through the way he structured his article and the ability to display his emotions and connect with his reader, Staples has constructed a strong article that is able to convince people to reevaluate their decisions by having them experience the situations for